Abstract
Design has not received much attention by the constraint-programming community, although in the development cycle of real-world applications it is probably the most expensive phase. Since constraint programming is declarative, design can go much further than for traditional imperative languages, as it can produce models that are executable. Because of the potentially huge number of constraints and variables of a real-world applications though, compactness of these models is a key issue. This paper abstracts the classical notion of constraint satisfaction problem to a new, more compact model. A design methodology based on such a model is then proposed. An interactive system that supports the methodology and integrates traditional constraint-programming languages to directly execute the resulting model is further presented. The system provides a visual environment that covers the full development cycle of constraint-based applications. Its benefits are finally illustrated on a real-world problem.
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Paltrinieri, M. (1995). A visual constraint-programming environment. In: Montanari, U., Rossi, F. (eds) Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming — CP '95. CP 1995. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 976. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-60299-2_30
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-60299-2_30
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